The next day, however, was passed in painful constraint. The house once more seemed to be under the depressing influence of a vague bitter sorrow. Louise's eyes were red, and Lazare avoided her and spent whole hours by himself in his room. But again the days went on; the constraint began to disappear, and laughter and whispering once more came back. Pauline still waited, indulging in foolish hopes even against her own convictions. Backed by uncertainty, she thought that she had never before really known what suffering was. But, at last, as she was going down to the kitchen one evening in the dusk to get a candle, she found Lazare and Louise kissing each other in the passage. Louise made her escape laughing; while Lazare, emboldened by the darkness, caught hold of Pauline and imprinted two brotherly kisses on her cheeks. 'I have thought it over,' he murmured. 'You are better and wiser than she is; and I still love you, but I love you as I loved my mother.' She had just strength to say: 'It is settled, then. I am very glad.' She felt that she had turned so pale, and her face was so cold, that she dared not go into the kitchen for fear she should faint. Without waiting to get a candle, she went upstairs again, saying that she had forgotten something. When she had shut herself up in the darkness, she thought she was going to die, for she felt suffocated, and could not shed a single tear. What had she done, she cried to herself, that he should have been cruel enough to make her torture still greater? Why couldn't he have accepted her sacrifice on the day when she proposed it to him, when she had possessed all her strength, unweakened by any false hope? Now the sacrifice had become a double one. She had lost him a second time, and all the more painfully since she had allowed herself to hope that she was winning him back. Ah, Heaven! She would be brave and bear it, but it was wicked to make her task such torture. Everything was speedily arranged. Véronique, quite aghast, could make nothing out of it. She thought that things had got turned upside down since her mistress's death. It was, however, Chanteau who was most surprised by the news. He, who usually took no interest in anything and just nodded his head in approval of any scheme that was mentioned to him, as though he were completely absorbed in the selfish enjoyment of the calm moments which he stole from his tormenting pain, burst into tears when Pauline herself announced the new arrangement to him. He gazed at her, and stammered incoherent protests and confessions. It wasn't his fault: he had wanted to do very differently long ago, both about the money and about the marriage, but, as she knew, he was too ill. However, the girl kissed him, protesting that it was she herself who was making Lazare marry Louise for very good reasons. At first he could scarcely believe her, and, blinking his eyes sadly, he asked her: 'Is that really the truth? Really?'